Understood. I’ll see that it’s done.
Confusion bound me, a frown carving into my brow as my heart pounded harder.
I leaned in and minimized the Word document so I could see where the message had come from.
Ice froze me from the inside out.
It was my shared folder with Cash.
The way we communicated. No real details ever given. Just numbers. Addresses.
I thought I cleared everything of importance off the laptop before I brought it to her.
How had I been so fucking careless?
But that’s the way Brinley made me.
Still, she shouldn’t have been able to get into it. It was encrypted. Covered by a password.
One that she’d clearly easily flushed out.
I looked back at the note. It’d been sent earlier today, and I scrambled to see its origination, starting from the first from early this morning.
A document that looked like it’d been created by me, simply saved as “D”.
Change of plans. He has to go.
Cash had responded a few hours later.
Are you sure? Intel says he’s a go.
Frantic, I clicked in and out of the files from that day.
It has to happen. Too much liability.
This isn’t normally the way you play.
I know, but there’s too much riding on this. The guy’s a liar. A rat. And you know what we do with those.
It felt like I’d been disemboweled.
A knife dragged down my abdomen.
Gutting me.
Strained air wheezed from my lungs as I tried to piece it together.
This fucking betrayal that I didn’t understand.
A command clearly made to kill Dereck.
Brinley gone.
Oh God, no.
She had to have gone to find him. Warn him.
My head whirled with every implication, and I would have passed out if it wasn’t for the fury that blazed through my insides.
